‘Hiroshima Nagasaki Download’ Screening at JANM

“Hiroshima Nagasaki Download,” a documentary by Shinpei Takeda, will be screened Saturday, Oct. 22, at 2 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum, First and Central in Little Tokyo.

Upon the end of World War II, many people that survived the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki immigrated to America. Coping with both physical and mental trauma, the survivors have lived quietly in a country that was once considered their “state’s enemy.”

Sixty-four years later, two former high school friends began their journey to seek the “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” deeply ingrained in the collective psyche of modern Japan. As the two drove down the American West Coast, visiting 18 A-bomb survivors as well as a Holocaust survivor, they came to realize the cruel nature of psychological trauma. With the vast landscape of American West in their background, the two explored the scars left by the atomic bombs and reflected on their Japanese identities.

Takeda, a director based in Mexico, has followed Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors in North and South America for the last five years.

There will be a Q&A after the screening with the filmmaker.

Presented in collaboration with The George and Sakaye Aratani Endowed Chair, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA.

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The Rafu Shimpo has been the nation's leading Japanese American newspaper since its original publication. We are proud to have served the Japanese American community from our Little Tokyo office in Downtown Los Angeles since 1903.